flâneur

Thanh Mai Nguyễn

11 followers · 9 following · 842 views

on the atlas — 9

highlights — 48

  • to learn about something you don't need to know about, just out of curiosity, or to try building something just because it would be cool, or to become freakishly good at something.
    How to Do Great Work
  • How do you get from starting small to doing something great? By making successive versions.
    How to Do Great Work
  • you'll learn faster and have more fun by trying stuff
    How to Do Great Work
  • trying lots of things will mean trying lots of things that don't work.
    How to Do Great Work
  • the best way to acquire new questions is to try answering existing ones. Questions don't just lead to answers, but also to more questions
    How to Do Great Work
  • Working on an unfashionable problem can be very pleasing. There's no hype or hurry
    How to Do Great Work
  • There are two ways to be comfortable breaking rules: to enjoy breaking them, and to be indifferent to them.
    How to Do Great Work
  • he other thing you need is a willingness to break rules.
    How to Do Great Work
  • To find new ideas you have to seize on signs of breakage instead of looking away.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Curiosity feeds originality by giving it new things to work on.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Be professionally curious about a few topics and idly curious about many more.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Original ideas don't come from trying to have original ideas. They come from trying to build or understand something slightly too difficult
    How to Do Great Work
  • I've never liked the term "creative process." It seems misleading. Originality isn't a process, but a habit of mind. Original thinkers throw off new ideas about whatever they focus on, like an angle grinder throwing off sparks. They can't help it.
    How to Do Great Work
  • core of being earnest is being intellectually honest. We're taught as children to be honest as an unselfish virtue — as a kind of sacrifice.
    How to Do Great Work
  • the more fans you have, the more new fans they'll bring you.
    How to Do Great Work
  • They get something done, rather than nothing.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Great work happens by focusing consistently on something you're genuinely interested in.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Work has a sort of activation energy, both per day and per project.
    How to Do Great Work
  • the right strategy is not to plan too much.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Strange tastes are often strong ones, and a strong taste for work means you'll be productive.
    How to Do Great Work
  • optimize for interestingness
    How to Do Great Work
  • you need to make yourself a big target for luck, and the way to do that is to be curious. Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books, ask lots of questions.
    How to Do Great Work
  • you may have to work at something for years before you know how much you like it or how good you are at it. And in the meantime you're not doing, and thus not learning about, most other kinds of work. So in the worst case you choose late based on very incomplete information.
    How to Do Great Work
  • three most powerful motives are curiosity, delight, and the desire to do something impressive.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Boldly chase outlier ideas
    How to Do Great Work
  • Many discoveries have come from asking questions about things that everyone else took for granted.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Don't let "work" mean something other people tell you to do. If you do manage to do great work one day, it will probably be on a project of your own.
    How to Do Great Work
  • The way to figure out what to work on is by working
    How to Do Great Work
  • When it comes to careers, society is like your great uncle who traps you at holidays and goes on a 15-minute mostly incoherent unsolicited advice monologue, and you tune out almost the whole time because it’s super clear he has very little idea what he’s talking about and that everything he says is like 45 years outdated.
    How to Pick a Career (That Actually Fits You) — Wait But Why
  • Becoming a Demanding Reader Reading is all about asking the right questions in the right order and seeking answers. There are four main questions you need to ask of every book: What is this book about? What is being said in detail, and how? Is this book true in whole or in part? What of it?
    How to Read a Book: The Ultimate Guide by Mortimer Adler - Farnam Street
  • Earning knowledge means making it your own. One way to do this with reading is reflection.
    The Necessity of Marginalia
  • While reading might allow you to borrow knowledge, you haven’t earned it.
    The Necessity of Marginalia
  • understanding is a two-way operation; the learner has to question himself and question the teacher.
    The Necessity of Marginalia
  • writing your reactions down helps you to remember the thoughts of the author.
    The Necessity of Marginalia
  • Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author.
    The Necessity of Marginalia
  • One of the ways we chew and digest what we’re reading is to comment on something someone else has written
    The Necessity of Marginalia
  • A good book, like a good wine, deserves to be savored.
    Reading Better: Retaining and Applying What You Read
  • If you just read one book on a topic, odds are you have a lot of blind spots in your knowledge. Synoptical reading is reading various books and articles on the same topic, finding and evaluating the contradictions, and forming an opinion.
    Reading Better: Retaining and Applying What You Read
  • You can’t get where you want to go if you’re not learning all the time.
    Reading Better: Retaining and Applying What You Read
  • The Note-Taking System You Never Learned
    Reading Better: Retaining and Applying What You Read
  • One way to filter books is through time. Time filters out what works from what doesn’t. And there is no need to waste time on books that don’t last. Time sorts the books worth reading deeply from the ones that should be skimmed or ignored.
    Reading Better: Retaining and Applying What You Read
  • The Levels of Reading offer four approaches to reading (from easiest to hardest). Reading to Entertain — The level of reading taught in our elementary schools. Reading to Inform — A superficial read. You skim, dive in and out, get a feel for the book, and get the gist of things. Reading to Understand— The real workhorse of reading. This is a thorough reading where you chew on things and digest them. Reading to Master — If you just read one book on a topic, odds are you have a lot of blind spots in your knowledge. Synoptical reading is reading various books and articles on the same topic, findi…
    Reading Better: Retaining and Applying What You Read
  • All the time you spend reading something bad comes at the expense of reading something good
    Reading Better: Retaining and Applying What You Read
  • All the time you spend reading something bad comes at the expense of reading something good.
    Reading Better: Retaining and Applying What You Read
  • Learning is a social activity in itself
    How to Build an Online Learning Community (In 2023) | LearnWorlds Blog
  • It’s the people we surround ourselves with - those who share our values and love of learning - that create the foundation for impactful education. While content and learning methods matter, these things continuously evolve based on new research and techniques. Surrounding ourselves with a supportive community focused on growth is how we can cultivate lifelong learning which will help us discover more high-quality content and methodology.
    A different look at the quality of learning - by Phuong Do
  • Exclusion is inherent in community-building. My job isn’t to eliminate it but to manage it.
    Communities are defined by people who don’t belong
  • It’s the responsibility of community engineers to design and communicate the shared goals and values of the community and exclude with empathy members who are not aligned. Exclusion is how we can create a safe and inclusive community.
    Communities are defined by people who don’t belong